3-2-1 Contact(Shadow)

An easy way to let you enable contact shadows on all your lights, because Blender doesn’t enable it by default, and doesn’t give you a way to enable it by default, even though it’d be damned useful if it was enabled by default.

So, enter this stupid thing, which will enable contact shadows on all lights in your scene, and is smart enough not to try to re-enable them on a light where they’ve been automatically enabled, and then disabled by hand. This means you can still have lights without contact shadows, if you’d like.

It’s disappointing that Blender doesn’t have a hook for “new object created” so that this could be automatically triggered any time you create a light. Alas, for now, you have to activate it manually.

Installation

It’s a Blender addon. It installs like a Blender addon.

Usage

3-2-1 Contact(Shadow) provides two operators, which you will need to bind to keys (via Edit > Preferences > Keymap). I added it under 3D View > 3D View (Global), which should work for you, as well. The two operators are:

ttocs.set_contact_shadows: Enable contact shadows on all lights. A hidden property is added to each like marking it as processed, and lights that have been processed won’t be processed again — so if you then turn off contact shadows on a light, they will stay off.

ttocs.force_set_contact_shadows: Enable contact shadows on all lights, unconditionally. Even if you’ve manually disabled contact shadows on some lights, they will be reenabled if you use this operator.